Samsung, ARM join FIDO Alliance Board of Directors

The FIDO Alliance has announced that both ARM and Samsung Electronics have joined the group’s growing board of directors.

“Samsung introduced the world’s first smartphone with biometric payment authorization system at Mobile World Congress this year. Samsung partnered with PayPal for including fingerprint-based authentication system utilizing FIDO Ready technologies in its latest flagship device Galaxy S5. We are thrilled to join the FIDO Alliance and look forward to working with industry leaders in paving the way for convenient, reliable and secure mobile payment experience based on open standards,” Michael Pak, Vice President of Security R&D Group, IT & Mobile Communications Division at Samsung said.

“ARM is supportive of FIDO’s vision of a world beyond passwords and our security architecture can help to turn that into reality,” Rob Coombs, director of security marketing, ARM said. “As a board member we want to push for the universal adoption of FIDO authentication as it will allow people to securely connect to the services they care about in a frictionless way that links multiple web-based services with a diverse range of devices.”

“Biometrics are already being used to authorize financial transactions from a smartphone, and it’s easy to see how technology such as an ARM TrustZone technology- based Trusted Execution Environment can be used with FIDO standards to move beyond passwords into a world where authentication methods are interoperable,” Coombs said. “The key is ensuring that embedded security builds on appropriate hardware and software that is well integrated so it’s fit for purpose and cost-effective.”

ARM is a semiconductor design company, which has its trust-zone trusted execution environment technology embedded in many connected devices.

Reported previously, Samsung and PayPal recently announced the debut of its biometric mobile payments and ecommerce system, which leverages FIDO standards.

Today, Nok Nok Labs announced that both Samsung and PayPal have selected the company’s NNL S3 Authentication Suite to enable the mobile biometric payment system introduced earlier this year. 

“Samsung continues to impress with innovations that showcase new technology’s potential.  Samsung and FIDO Alliance founder PayPal, along with founder members Synaptics & Nok Nok Labs, have collaborated to develop the first FIDO Ready technology deployment.  The new Galaxy S5 represents the first time that mobile payments are secure, private and easy-to-use.  Samsung’s embracing of FIDO authentication signals endless possibilities for strong, easy to use authentication everywhere,” FIDO Alliance president Michael Barrett said. “We enthusiastically welcome Samsung to the FIDO Alliance Board of Directors, and anticipate a new breadth of influence and expansion for FIDO authentication.”

“We are very excited to welcome ARM to the FIDO Alliance Board of Directors. As FIDO Alliance membership now exceeds 100 participants, ARM is moving from sponsor to board membership, taking on an important leadership role within the FIDO ecosystem,” Barrett said. “Next developments in FIDO authentication will prove critical to accelerating adoption of strong authentication that can move us beyond the confines of password dependencies. ARM’s leadership in many global markets can measurably facilitate interoperability among authentication methods, which is foundational to the FIDO Alliance’s objectives.”

Earlier this year, the alliance released its first public review draft of its technology specification. 

Article Topics

ARM  |  authentication  |  FIDO Alliance  |  Samsung